


I don't want that (I want you instead)

by goldenheadfreckledheart



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/M, Musicians, Tonight You're Mine AU, handcuffs but not in a kinky way, music festival AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-07
Updated: 2017-05-07
Packaged: 2018-10-28 22:19:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,776
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10840620
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/goldenheadfreckledheart/pseuds/goldenheadfreckledheart
Summary: A week ago, Clarke had barely heard of Bellamy Blake.He’s half of some indie rock duo that Raven had shown a passing interest in sometime last year, and Clarke’s half sure she’s heard the one song of theirs that got popular enough to be on a few alt rock stations. All of which is to say that she didn’t think she’d ever be in the same vicinity as him, much less… attached to him.And not in the emotional sense.OR: Clarke and Bellamy are musicians who get handcuffed together at a music festival. A Tonight You're Mine AU.





	I don't want that (I want you instead)

**Author's Note:**

> BFF fill. Prompt: Music Festival AU!! With either them all going together and camping together (overdue sexual tension ensues) or Clarke and Raven meet Octavia and her competitive older brother Bellamy! 
> 
> I felt like this would be a good excuse for a fluffy Tonight You’re Mine AU, which is broadly about two musicians who get handcuffed together at a music festival. You definitely don't need to have seen it to follow this fic. Title from You Instead, a song in the movie--and also the alternate title for the movie? Idk dude.

A week ago, Clarke had barely heard of Bellamy Blake.

He’s half of some indie rock duo that Raven had shown a passing interest in sometime last year, and Clarke’s half sure she’s heard the one song of theirs that got popular enough to be on a few alt rock stations. All of which is to say that she didn’t think she’d ever be in the same vicinity as him, much less… attached to him.

And not in the emotional sense.

“What the _fuck_ ,” she says, looking down at their hands, where a pair of silver handcuffs glints almost smugly in the beating sun; one cuff attached to her wrist, the other to Bellamy Blake’s. She’s still trying to figure out exactly how she got into this situation, because she’s pretty sure a security guard, an attempted lesson in _getting along_ , and a lost key were involved, but that feels so cliché that she’s questioning her own coherence. Maybe this is what heatstroke feels like.

“I think you’ve said that already, princess,” her companion says, dry. Too realistic to be a hallucination. Shit.

He’s not wrong about the repetitiveness of her swearing, but a fair few of her expletives in the last half hour have transcended the basic handcuffed-to-another-person situation, springing more from _who_ she’s handcuffed to. Because the only thing worse than being handcuffed to a stranger at a music festival is being handcuffed to an arrogant, small-time musician who thinks he’s the next big thing. Nevermind that she’s a small-time musician herself.

One day her life isn’t going to resemble a bad TV show. _One day._

For now, she smiles up at him, sudden and sunnily, and gets the satisfaction of seeing his smirk falter. She also maybe does it to check if he’s still as hot as she’d thought upon first seeing him. He is, and it’s definitely an injustice.

“Pardon me for being so affected by your _striking_ presence,” she says, with as much sarcasm as she can muster. “Not every day I have the honor of being attached to such a stunningly bigheaded _rock star._ ”

His smile is more of a baring of teeth. “Trust me. If I wanted to end up handcuffed to a wannabe _popstar,”_ —he emphasizes the word, taking her jab at his relative obscurity and twisting it one notch deeper—“I would have stopped in Los Angeles.”

It’s an exchange that turns out to be fairly epitomic of the next several hours of her life. Chained to Bellamy Blake at a music festival, with no foreseeable way to find a key, as their respective performances loom closer and closer. Excellent.

*

Raven and Octavia—Bellamy’s little sister and the second part of their duo (the _better_ part, Clarke would wager, just on first impressions)—eventually wander off when it becomes clear the two of them aren’t going to get any more pleasant, or easy to handle. Which Clarke thinks is probably fair when she and her extra appendage finally notice their departure a while later.

“Guess it’s just you and me,” he says as Clarke finishes a sweeping search for Raven’s bobbing ponytail and comes up short. She notes that Bellamy’s words are more exhaustion than sarcasm, though the latter is definitely still present.

They’ve spent the last two hours exhausting their options for unlocking the cuffs—chasing down multiple security guards, giving vague descriptions of the one who had got them into this mess, and when that strategy comes up empty, trying various other handcuff keys on the ones gracing their wrists. They’d even taken up a random festival-goer’s offer to pick the lock for twenty bucks, bickering and sniping throughout it all. And all for nothing.

So now they’re wandering the festival ground, under the pretense of looking for other ways to solve their problem, but Clarke’s basically given up at this point, and she assumes that Bellamy has too, given the blank look on his face. Her mom’s a police chief, so as long as they can survive this weekend, as uncomfortable as the thought makes her, Abby has assured her that she can get them out of this mess.

She’d relayed this information to Bellamy twenty minutes ago and he’d responded... well, about how she expected.

“Your mother _would_ be a police officer,” he’d grumbled. “You ever get tired of your life being a cliché?”

“Funnily enough, only when I end up chained to douchebags like you,” she’d replied, giving the handcuffs a sharp shake and receiving a scowl in return. It ended up pinching her a little too, but she’d hid her wince.

He’s not wrong, though. She knows she’s privileged, and she does her best to never stop being aware of it and to use it in a positive way. But she’s not eager to sit down and explain that to Bellamy Blake, who doesn’t care to consider anything past first impressions.

And sure, it might be her fault that his first impression of her is so bad, what with blaming him for the entire situation, but he’d done the same, so it’s not like he has the high ground.

He’d also called their music ‘privileged white girl pop-rock’ (“You know Raven’s _not white_ right?” “She’s not the lead, though, is she?”) and she’d returned with accusations of ‘pseudo-edgy poetry with half a melody’ so, really, they’re equally at fault here.

“What time’s your set?” he asks on a sigh when they finally decide to take a break from what has to be their third time wandering the length of the fairground. She can barely see her ankles through the dust they’ve amassed.

She checks her watch. “Three hours.”

“You sure having a _pseudo-edgy_ Asian guy join your set isn’t going to ruin your image?” She thinks he tries for a sneer, as he says it, but he looks about as tired as she feels, and it falls short.

“Again, wouldn’t make you the first brown person on the stage.”

He shrugs a little. “She’s still not the face of the band.”

Clarke heaves a frustrated sigh, pushes aside the slight self-consciousness at the realization that he must have heard their music, in order to know all this.

“She doesn’t want to be. We tried it for a while, but she’d rather stick to guitar and sound engineering, and have me do the talking and singing. It's what works for us,” she barrels on, “And we'd switch if she wanted to.”

They're a team.

Bellamy looks like he might reply, but she doesn’t let him.

“Anyway, can we just,” she waves her free hand, “fucking bury the hatchet?”

He raises a disbelieving eyebrow.

“I don’t want to be here. You don’t want to be here. It’s clear we’re not getting out of this anytime soon, so can we try to pretend we don’t hate each other? For sanity’s sake?”

She thinks the edge of his mouth turns upward, just a little.

“ _What?_ ”

“No, nothing,” he says, smirk growing. “That was just… pretty mature. Not what I generally expect from a headstrong musician.”

He can’t possibly think she’s the only _headstrong musician_ here.

“Are you so severe on your own kind?” she quips, short.

He opens his mouth, but then tilts his head. “Was that a Pride and Prejudice reference?”

It throws her for a second, but when she replays her words in her head, she’s surprised, in spite of herself.

“Only if you squint just right,” she says. And when she adds a teasing, “Nerd,” at the end, it doesn’t even come out like an insult.

“No more than you, apparently.”

She frowns. “Fine. Truce?”

He offers his free hand and she shakes it with hers, huffing an unamused laugh at the awkward angle.

Maybe this won’t be so bad.

*

With an hour and a half to go ‘til Clarke and Raven’s set, a few of Bellamy’s fans find them by the carnival games, where Clarke’s been heckling his every missed ring toss.

“Um, sorry, are you Bellamy Blake? From Northern Fights?”

He’s smiling before they’re even done asking, turning away from the game. It’s warm and genuine and… a little bit breathtaking. Clarke had been expecting a forced smile, at best.

“Yeah, hey guys. Thanks for coming to say hi.”

And he keeps surprising her, taking time to talk to each of them, signing autographs, making sure they’re all having a good time at the festival. She hangs off to the side while they finish up, or as far to the side as she can get with her wrist tethered to his

“You’re Clarke Griffin, right?” one of the younger girls asks, noticing her. Clarke nods, smiles. The girl blushes before asking, almost at a whisper, “Are you guys, like, dating?”

“Nah,” Bellamy says, before Clarke has the chance to blurt out a hasty _no_. He nods to the handcuffs and exaggerates an eye-roll. “It’s a publicity stunt that our managers thought would be fun.” Then he lowers his voice, gives the girl, and a couple others who have hovered closer, a wink. “But don’t tell anyone we told you that.”

They all dutifully make their promises, and Bellamy offers them last minute hugs—Clarke receives a couple as well—before they’re on their way, with promises to see them at Bellamy’s show the following day.

“I guess I really am the rock star here,” Bellamy says once they’re out of earshot. A look at his face tells her he’s teasing.

“Yeah, yeah. You convinced a couple impressionable teens to like you. Don’t let it go to your head.”

He tosses her a smug smile. “Try not to be jealous.”

“Dick.”

“Princess.”

“Come on, I’ve got a show to prep for,” she says, and he follows after her with a laugh.

*

They’re due to be on one of the mid-sized stages on the east side of the festival, and she and Bellamy get there just as Jasper, Monty, and Lincoln arrive, to help them load gear onto the stage.

Clarke greets them, and fields their questioning looks at Bellamy.

“It’s a long story.” One she assumes Raven has already told them

“Northern Fights, right?” Jasper pipes up.

Bellamy responds with a nod.

“Sick. Love your stuff,” her friend says, Monty and Lincoln nodding along.

Bellamy looks a little… surprised, honestly. Like he thought somehow that Clarke would have brainwashed her friends into thinking his music sucks.

Which is fine. Let him prove himself wrong about her.

“No accounting for taste,” she says, light, with half an eye-roll. “Traitors.”

“Hey, we’re still here to do all your heavy lifting,” Lincoln says.

“And that’s why you’re my favorite,” Clarke returns, to the protests of Monty and Jasper. “Shouldn’t have taught Raven to do our sound setup,” she tells them with a playful shrug. “Now you’re obsolete.”

“She basically taught herself,” Monty says, quiet, at the same time that Jasper insists, “Hey, come on. You still need groupies.”

Clarke makes a face at that, but turns to Bellamy anyways, who at least isn’t scowling at their interaction. That’s something.

“Looks like I’m the rock star in this situation after all,” she teases.

He gives her a wry smile that verges on genuine amusement. “Yeah, somehow I’m not feeling too jealous of you.”

“Hey!” Jasper says, frowning as he reads into Bellamy’s response.

Clarke just laughs, and taps Bellamy’s wrist in lieu of jerking his arm on her way to the stage. “Come on, I need to sound check.”

“Lead the way, Your Majesty.”

She might swing her arm a little harder than necessary as she turns, and smiles when she hears him stumble.

Raven’s already on stage, and she and Clarke do a quick check of the mics, monitors, and instruments, before Raven points out to Bellamy the folding chair next to Clarke’s keyboard. It’s been labelled ‘For Angsty Rock Stars Only’. He flips her off as Clarke gives her bandmate a high-five.

After that it’s their off-stage prep time, as the crowd begins to grow. Bellamy, blissfully, is fairly quiet throughout their pre-show rituals.

“Alright, let’s go play some damn music,” Raven says, winding down their routine as they get ready to take the stage.

“And have a damn good time,” Clarke says. And because it’s tradition, “Fuck Finn.”

“Fuck Finn,” Raven echoes.

Clarke catches Bellamy’s eye, but he just shrugs, as if to say _what do I know? It’s your pre-show ritual._ “Fuck Finn, I guess.”

“That’s the spirit,” Raven says, and they take the stage.

They do their standard intro, Clarke taking the head for most of it, but it’s Raven who says, “You might notice Clarke’s acquired a growth.”

That gets a few scattered cheers from Northern Fights fans in the crowd.

“Yeah well,” Clarke takes over. “Thanks to some… less than convenient circumstances, Bellamy here is going to join us for the performance.” And because maybe his jabs from earlier still sting a little, she adds, “Who knows, maybe he’ll learn something.”

That gets a few more cheers and laughs.

“Anyway,” she says, turning on her ‘ _hype voice’_ as Raven likes to call it, “We’re Flight of the Phoenix and we’re here to have a good time, and maybe make you feel something. Let’s do this.”

It’s a surprisingly good show, despite the fact that her keyboard playing is a little hindered by the slight weight of Bellamy’s arm, which he at least dutifully holds up at keyboard height most of the time.

That is, she’d say it’s a good show until Bellamy starts _harmonizing_ during their final number. Which is just, a shock on so many levels.

She doesn’t even notice him standing up to get closer to the mic—too caught up in the song—until he’s _there_ , making her jump at his proximity, and then glare when he comes in with a harmony beneath her vocals.

She wants to seethe, to ask him what the _fuck_ he’s doing, trying to ruin their finale, but she doesn’t have the air, or time, to yell at him between the words. He doesn’t stop after that line either, and she’s seriously considering stopping the whole song, except that there’s something earnest in his eyes and, well… the harmony isn’t terrible. Not even close.

She’s definitely going to yell at him after this. But for now, she rolls her eyes and shifts a infinitesimal step to the right, so that they’re effectively sharing the mic. The grin he flashes her _doesn’t_ make her stomach flip, as Raven gives a whoop from somewhere to their left.

The crowd, Clarke notices, after barely avoiding throttling Bellamy Blake, live and onstage, is _loving_ it. Not even just the Northern Fights fans either. People are genuinely enjoying this.

And after a moment of consideration, she can’t blame them. They do sound _good_.

She can’t help smiling at Bellamy, just a little, as they shift into the last chorus, where he echoes her lyrics, just a second behind her melody line, in a way that works surprisingly well _._ She gives up on the keyboard eventually, letting Raven carry them on the guitar instead, as she turns fully to Bellamy, and then they’re singing _at_ each other, like it’s some kind of battle, egging the other on with every word.

The chorus draws to a close and they chant the hard hitting final lyrics, cuffed hands overlapping on the mic, the crowd indistinguishable from a roar of sound. One that grows even louder when Raven strikes the final chord, cheers erupting. In the moment of triumph, Clarke takes Bellamy’s hand, raising their arms above them as they take a bow.

Just to keep him from forgetting the cuffs and pulling away too hard, she justifies. But she’s grinning, and so is he.

*

“You guys are great.”

“We are, thanks,” Raven says, looking how Clarke feels. A little angry, but mostly exhilarated.

“You’re not terrible either,” Clarke admits after a beat of silence. “But let’s not pretend we’d be having this conversation if you weren’t good.”

Bellamy winces a little. “Yeah, uh. That’s—I shouldn’t have done that without asking. I’d be pissed if someone did it to me. Dick move.”

“Then why did you do it?”

Bellamy shifts. “It’s Octavia’s favorite song of yours, so I’ve heard it a few times and… I don’t know. You guys are fucking great live.” He runs a hand through his hair. “But that still doesn’t mean I should have jumped in.”

Raven meets Clarke’s eyes and lifts her shoulders, letting her have the final word.

Clarke sighs. And then lets him off the hook, if only because he looks like he means it. “Like I said, it’s a good thing you’re not terrible.”

He grins, and there’s definitely relief in his eyes. “I’ll keep that in mind.”

*

They’re at the tables near a food stand later when Bellamy catches hold of her wrist, her hamburger halfway to her mouth.

“Hey, what gives? It’s my turn to eat.”

They’re getting pretty good at this _being-handcuffed_ thing, honestly.

When he doesn’t reply, she turns to him, expecting to meet his eyes, but instead they’re downturned, looking toward her wrist. Toward the red ring that’s started to form where the metal rubs against her skin.

“Shit,” he breathes.

“It’s not that bad,” she says, truthfully. She hadn’t even noticed.

“It will be, though. We still have another day of this. Hold on.” he slings his backpack off of his shoulders and rifles through it.

“Seriously Bellamy, it’s fine, I’ll just—” she cuts herself off as he produces two black arm bands. The stretchy kind you’d see on the pop-punk stars of the early 2000s. Wordlessly, he pulls one onto his own wrist, struggling for a second to get it to lie flat between his wrist and the metal cuff.

She’s still staring by the time he finishes and looks up at her.

“What?”

She can’t help the surprised giggle that bubbled up her throat. “Why do you even have these?

He looks down at his wrist, and must realize how ridiculous it is, because he grins and says, “Please, Clarke. Everyone knows real musicians never steer far from their emo roots.”

She laughs, and nods—“Fair enough”—before letting him slide the other onto her wrist. “Thanks.”

“It’s the least I can do for ruining your show.”

For ruining their show in the best possible way, she thinks, recalling how _easy_ it was to sing with him. But she just nods.

With that settled, and because they are talking about emo-phases, after all, she says, “Hey, do you want to see the awful bangs I had freshman year of college?”

He scoots closer as she pulls out her phone. “Absolutely.”

*

There are a couple other shows and parties later that night that they both want to see, which saves them from another argument. Though at this point, they’ve gone surprisingly long without one, even if insults still fly back and forth every few minutes. They’re tamer now. More friendly, or, at least less venomous.

Raven and Octavia join them now, though they both seem more interested in making fun of her and Bellamy than the festivities themselves. But it does give Clarke the chance to see how Bellamy interacts with his sister, how they tease and bicker, but how he always keeps tabs on her in the crowd, turning anxious if he loses for more than a few minutes.

“I think she went to get more drinks,” she says, low, when she sees his brows knit together.

He only looks a little surprised that she’d noticed his searching. “Great, because that’s going to facilitate good choices,” he says, sarcastically.

“Did you just use the word _facilitate_ ? We’re at a _party_ Bellamy. You have to at least pretend to be cool.”

“Shut up. I’m cool. I have fans.” He says it like he’s unsure of it, as if they haven’t been stopped throughout the night, equally often by fans of each of their bands, if not both. It’s kind of fun to see how their demographics overlap.

“Sure, sure,” she says, patting his arm awkwardly with her free hand. “Your sister will be fine. She’s an adult. And also cooler than you.”

Indignation replaces the worry in his eyes as he argues back, and she counts it as a victory.

Later, they all move into the big concert tent for the last show of the night, where Lincoln, Monty, and Jasper find them as well.

They make a good group, she thinks, no matter how they got here.

Somewhere in the middle of the jumping and dancing, after she and Bellamy shift in opposite directions one too many times, feeling the yank of the handcuffs even through the sweatbands, Clarke slides her hand into his with a questioning half smile. He returns it, and squeezes his fingers around hers.

When the concert ends, they join the chaotic crowd stumbling towards the exists, and Bellamy finds her hand again, Octavia’s too, to save them from separation. Even as Clarke joins hands with Raven—who has the others in tow—pulling their string of friends out of the crowd and into the night… there’s something about the feel of his fingers between hers that makes her smile.

*

Clarke decides, before they even reach the tents, all still full of that happy post-show exhaustion, that the sleeping situation doesn’t have to be awkward if they don’t let it.

They claim a couple tents next to each other, in a stroke of luck, and they’re all too tired to argue with the sleeping arrangements that Raven works out. She and Octavia share one of the beds in the first tent, Bellamy and Clarke on the other— _not awkward_ , Clarke reminds her brain—while the rest of the boys take the second tent.

Clarke doesn’t miss the way Octavia’s eyes linger after Lincoln, when then all say their goodnights, and she doesn’t think Bellamy does either.

Despite all her mental prep, the sleeping thing really isn’t that bad. The bed’s a little small, but not unbearable, and they’re all so tired that they barely make it through stripping off shoes and socks before collapsing into bed.

“Don’t breathe in my face,” she say to Bellamy as her eyes drift shut.

“Go to sleep, Clarke.”

*

She’s trying not to be annoying. Honestly.

But it’s the middle of the night and her bladder apparently didn’t get that memo.

“Bellamy,” she hisses, for the second time. “I have to pee.”

He just groans.

She repeats the words a third time, and gets the same response.

In her sleepy haze, she pokes him, irritated. “Don’t make me pee on you.”

He makes a face at that, and she grins.

“I can tell you’re awake, you know.”

He mumbles something incoherent as they awkwardly untangle from the covers.

“Sorry,” she says quietly as they exit the tent.

“It’s fine,” he says, running a hand through his disastrous curls, looking way too good in the moonlight. The thought shocks her. “You can just owe me.” His voice is low, groggy.

“Yeah?” she asks with a smile. “What do you want, a pony?”

“You’re rich right? You can afford it.”

“Sure, sure,” she says, dragging them toward a row of shitty festival toilets. “First thing when we get out of here, I’ll get you a pony.”

He mumbles something that sounds like “you’re the best” as she slips into one of the bathrooms, the door mostly closing against his arm while she does her business.

She’s going to have so many new one-handed skills when this whole thing is over, she thinks, mostly so she doesn’t have to dwell on the awkward situation.

“All done,” she say when she steps out, grabbing some hand sanitizer from the nearby station. He takes some too, and she quirks an eyebrow.

“Dirty by association.”

Clarke knocks her shoulder into his. “Dork.”

They make their way back toward the tents in comfortable silence, the campground much less chaotic at this time of night.

“I’m hungry,” he says suddenly, when they’re nearly back.

When she looks at him questioningly, he gives no response.

“I think that churro place is still open,” she says, and shrugs at his look. “I’m feeling pretty awake now anyway.”

So they find the churros and then a patch of ground further away from the campground that’s miraculously more grass than mud, and settle in.

She’s not sure when they start talking, but once they do, they don’t stop for hours.

He tells her about growing up basically raising Octavia, about how music was always a good way to entertain her, and a good way to keep them both sane when they got older, especially after their mom died. He went to community college, but he’d like to use his half of their band money, if they ever make much, to go to grad school. She gets the feeling that even _planning_ to use that money for himself, instead of his sister, has been a long process.

“So,” she says, to break the heavy silence when he finishes the story, “not _pseudo_ -angst, then.”

He smiles at her words from earlier in the day. “Nah, only real angst here. Emo roots, remember?”

She raises their cuffed hands in some semblance of a salute. Then, “She’s lucky to have you. Your sister.”

He nods a little. Indistinguishable look on his face.

“I’m willing to bet there’s more to your music than… what was it?” he says after a beat, no doubt thinking back to his own earlier words. “White girl pop-rock?”

“Privileged white girl pop-rock,” she supplies, dutifully.

He winces a little, but she grins. “Nah, it’s okay. You’re not far off.”

So she fills him in on her backstory. Which isn’t nearly as bad as his, as far as she’s concerned. Her parents divorced and her dad passed all before she was thirteen, but she’s always had her mom, and money, and had her choice of college when she finished high school.

“And Raven?”

“We dated the same guy in college. At that same time. He didn’t tell either of us.”

“Asshole.”

“Yeah, pretty much. So we both dumped him—Finn—and found out about a year later that we made a pretty good team, when we weren’t pissed at each other over a guy.”

“Ah,” he says in understanding. “Fuck Finn.”

She flashes him a grin. “Right on.”

“You guys are really good. I’m glad you came out of that with the more… quality person.”

“Yeah, me too,” she says, her smile soft. “Hey.”

“Hey,” he echoes back.

She knocks her shoulder into his. “I hardly know any of your music. What your favorite song?”

“Of ours?”

“Yeah.”

He drags over the backpack that she hadn’t even notice him grab before they left the tent. After a moment of rummaging, he pulls out an iPod, and she falls over laughing.

“What?” he asks, an adorable look of genuine confusion on his face.

“Sorry, I just,” she manages through gasps of laughter. “Is that bag just filled with like, relics of the past?”

He finally realizes she’s talking about the iPod, and levels her a glare.

“You’re such a grandpa.”

“You know, Octavia told me the same thing _before_ I got an iPod, so I’m not sure how to win here.”

“Poor rockstar,” she teases.

“Shut up,” he says, and then hands her an earbud.

And even as she feels herself getting more and more comfortable around him, talking to him, sharing stories, getting lost in his freckles more than once—even with _all that_ cheesiness already filling her head—she still manages to think that the music he plays her is the best thing she’s ever heard.

Punk rock for sure, but definitely the kind she prefers, with a sarcastic edge, and an underlying, ongoing sense of _heart._

She has to stare at him for a second. Reveling at how they ended up here.

“What, you don’t like it?”

“No,” she says, leaning her head on his shoulder. “I love it.”

After a while, he turns his head towards her, and she looks up.

“Do you have any of your stuff?”

“You already heard us play today,” she says, even as she sits up to pull out her phone and switch the headphones from his iPod.

“Lucky me, I guess.”

She shoves his shoulder gently, and then settles against him, queueing up a few of their songs.

“This one’s my favorite from today,” he says, a while later.

“Not the one you ruined?”

“That one was good too.”

She grins again, leaning further against him. “Bellamy Blake likes our privileged white girl pop-rock. I might die of happiness.”

He laughs, and slides his fingers between hers. “You know Raven’s not white, right?”

*

They don’t get to sleep until the sun starts to peek above the horizon, and when Clarke opens her eyes hours later it’s bright, and Raven is saying, “Get decent and get out here, you two!”

Clarke rubs her free hand across her eyes and it comes away smudged with yesterday’s mascara.

“We were in here when you woke up Raven,” Clarke calls back after a second, without humor. “You know we’re already decent.”

“Bellamy’s never decent,” his sister pipes up.

He groans from beside her, helping her push back the covers when the handcuffs get twisted. “What’s going on?”

“The world is punishing us for staying up so late.”

“The world in the form of Raven and Octavia?”

“Isn’t that how it usually works?” she asks with a grin. One that he returns, wide, making her blink.

“We can hear you mumbling!” Raven calls. “Get out here already.”

“Jesus, okay, okay,” Clarke says, pulling back the flap, to find Raven, Octavia, and Lincoln… who’s holding a giant pair of bolt cutters.

“Oh. Thank god,” she says, partially because she does have what feels like a permanent crick in her wrist now, but also because it feels like what she should be saying. Even if her stomach is sinking.

The trio trip over themselves telling their story, of how Lincoln knows some of the people involved in constructing and taking down the stages, and how he’d convinced them, with assistance from Raven and Octavia, (“I really don’t want to know what that entails,” Bellamy muttered) that they were trustworthy enough to borrow the bolt cutters for an hour or so.

Lincoln tells them to hold still, and then has them separated before Clarke can analyze the fact that the feeling in her stomach that hasn’t gone away.

They’ve barely had a chance to stretch their wrists, getting used to _not_ being attached to another person, before Octavia is saying, “Oh shit. Shit, Bell, we’re going to be late for soundcheck.”

“What? What time is it?”

And then all of a sudden, almost exactly twenty-four hours after it all started, Bellamy and his sister are gone, with nothing but a hasty wave and a concerned look over his shoulder as evidence that they’re not just as much strangers now as they were a day ago.

*

Raven forces Clarke, and the rest of the group, to shower and eat before they even think about finding the siblings’ stage.

Which is like, healthy, but Clarke’s impatient. And anxious.

They don’t make it until halfway through the first song of their set and Clarke nearly stumbles to a stop at the sound of his voice, just as good—better even—than through the headphones when she’d heard this song the night before.

“Come _on_ ,” Raven says, with a tug at Clarke’s hand, and a smile that says she knows exactly what’s going through her friend’s head.

Monty knows one of the stage hands, a guy he refers to as Nate, and luckily he recognizes them from the performance yesterday, and lets them up backstage.

They get there just as Bellamy and Octavia finish the song and break into their opening dialogue.

“Thanks for coming out guys,” Bellamy is saying. “We know we’re not as pretty as the Northern Lights—”

“Speak for yourself,” Octavia interrupts, as if on cue. The crowd loves it.

Bellamy inclines his head in agreement. “But that’s okay, because that’s not our name anyway. Hope you enjoy the set. We’re Northern Fights.”

Octavia is the first to catch sight of them, halfway through their second song, and she tosses them a wink that Clarke is ninety percent sure is for Lincoln, rather than their group as a whole.

Bellamy catches on a little later, and when he spots them at the side stage, he lights up like the sun. She smiles so hard her cheeks hurt.

The siblings play through the rest of the song, nailing every part of it, and when it comes to a close, Octavia takes up the role of spokesperson, charming the crowd while Bellamy takes a detour to side stage.

He’s still grinning. “You came.”

She’s about to say that they _all_ did, when she realizes that her friends aren’t behind her like they were a moment ago.

“You had to come to my show,” she says instead, smile matching his. “It only seemed fair.”

He takes a breath. “We were pretty good together, right?”

It’s not an admission of feelings, but the potential for a double meaning is there, and there’s something in his eyes that she can’t read, so she takes the chance, catching his hand to pull him offstage, out of the view of the crowd, for just a moment, so she can slide a hand into his hair and press her lips to his.

“I think we are, yeah,” she says, barely louder than a whisper, when she pulls back, her eyes closed.

Before she can open them, he’s kissing her again, short but deep, and when they pull apart this time, her eyes are open, matching smiles on their faces.

“See you after the show?” he asks.

“I’ll be here.”

*

Six months later, Flight of the Phoenix and Northern Fights join forces, rebranding as Northern Flights, even when Octavia says that it sounds like some kind of obscure Icelandic airline.

“That could work right?” Clarke asks from their couch. “We’re like, soaring over the competition or something.”

“Soaring to the top of the charts,” Bellamy adds, helpfully, from his place between her knees. He reaches back in anticipation of her high-five.

“You two are terrible,” Raven says. “You know that right?”

“We’re aware,” Clarke chirps.

Perceptive fans of the band take notice, even from their first few shows as a new band, that the leads never take the stage without a black sweatband at their wrists. Hers on the left, his on the right.

**Author's Note:**

> Tonight You're Mine/You Instead definitely isn't a _good_ movie, and it's a lot more angsty than this fic, but I enjoy it. It's like, fun trash.
> 
> I'm always around on [tumblr](http://www.goldenheadfreckledheart.tumblr.com)!


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